Silas Dillon of Cary County

by Clifford Schrage

  I wonder about teachers like Mr. Kemp and Mr. Tinge. Surely the fact that I came from a dysfunctional situation wasn’t hard to discern. I believe they may have singled me out, applauding me partly because they sensed I needed it. For cast-offs like me, the little candles to go on required the fuel like those.

  One day in November I had an exceptionally bad asthma attack at school. It actually began the night before, but gradually grew worse, and really peaked after running on the soccer field in gym class. I was suffocating. My inhaler at the nurse’s office wasn’t helping, so the nurse—not wanting to take any chances—called an ambulance. That was something. I got a lot of attention. The whole school knew, and many of the teachers in the front of the school let their kids look out the windows as the medical technicians wheeled me out and drove me away to Cary County Hospital where I was born.

  One of the childcare workers drove Mommy, and she met me at the emergency room where I was propped up in a bed between high green curtains getting oxygen and some stronger medicine in a big nebulizer. She was so frantic—talking, blaming people, yelling, dramatizing, just generally in one of her backward moods. Security was called and took Mommy away into another room. I was especially happy to see Molly come. She didn’t have to, but someone from the halfway house called her. She calmed Mommy down, and she calmed me down too. I somehow breathed better with her there.

  Molly always had to explain things to people, professional people. That was part of her job I guess. She spoke low, almost to a whisper, not knowing I could hear, to a nurse and the emergency room supervisor: “Just understand, this boy’s mom is sometimes unstable. She sees these situations as opportunities to gain some attention. She somehow feels she’s the center of a great drama. That’s part of her neurosis, Just try to respond to her genially and she’ll be fine!”

  “Yes, fine, thank you Ms.-”

  “Molly Fresh. I’m the case worker.”

  “I see.”

  “Try to be gentle with little Silas. He’s been through a lot—too much—especially lately. His asthma has been aggravated no doubt because of some of the stresses of displacement. He was taken last month from a long time placement—five years. He was growing quite secure, doing so well, but then the court decided to award his mother custody, in a special program—a trial basis.”

  The physician-supervisor listened patiently, nodding, saying “ummmm” and “I see, I see.”

  “Besides his asthma, he’s recently acquired this horrible eczema. That’s why his skin is the way you see it.”

  “Would you mind staying Ms. Fresh until the boy’s airways stabilize?”

  “No, I can stay.”

  I could recognize then, for the first time, how Mommy affected me, and could distinguish her affect from Molly’s and others’. A light went on. Unlike some kids who love their negligent or abusive parents, I plainly didn’t. Perhaps if I hadn’t experienced a tender home like the Sparks’ and didn’t know any different, I’d feel different. But I was mad.

  We stayed there another hour or so until I could breath better, and then Molly drove us back to the big residence by the channel in time for dinner.

  After the holidays in early January the Sparks’ came to visit me, and this time I could tell something was up. Mommy Maureen and other people at the house let us be together alone for once. It was like the old days. We sat in the big reading room on soft chairs.

  “What’s the matter?” I said.

  “Well Silas, we’re moving, away from here, to Ohio,” Mommy Lucinda said.

  “God has called us, Silas, to move on—a new pastorate, a church—for me to pastor in Cincinnati. It was very unusual how it all transpired, but He’s made it very clear, son.” Daddy’s deep, confident voice reached my soul. It always felt like that when he talked. This news hurt me, but somehow I felt like there really was a great God that talked to him like that whenever he spoke to me so honestly.

  “Oh.”

  Justin just looked at me, unless I looked at him; then he looked away. He kept swinging one foot up and down as he slouched in his chair. I could tell he didn’t want to move away.

  “Will I still see you?”

  There was a long pause. “We’re going to keep in touch as much as possible, son,” Daddy said. Again there was a thoughtful hesitation. I could tell Daddy wanted to say things to me about how he felt about everything—about court, the battle, Mommy Maureen; but he restrained himself. There was this sort of controlling governor inside of him. He was frustrated, especially with her selfishness surrounding me; but he refused to disintegrate any honor I may have been developing in my attitude and opinion toward her. He spurned his temptation to embitter me by denigrating the courts or New Blossom Children’s Services. He was so slow and deliberate to speak, so controlled and slow to anger, so careful with his words, so gentle with me.

  Mommy Lucinda began to cry, and there was something about her crying that Saturday afternoon that revealed to me that she felt defeated, struggling with something in her faith, and it had something to do with me, and their lack of success at legally securing me for adoption.

  Daddy did almost all the talking that afternoon. Recalling now, I can’t imagine how much stress was on him at that time. It had to be overwhelming—pastoring, comforting his little family in all this business surrounding me, comforting me, moving, preparing for a new ministry, planning, making these decisions…. We were all going through an ordeal.

  The wind blasted so cold outside that day. The sun shone and the shadows remained long—all through the day—as the sun hovered low, clinging close to the earth just a few weeks further than the solstice. I wondered, gazing at the coal-colored wild cherry limbs which kept bobbing up and down in the tossing wind. I merely wondered, gazing numbly through glass out the window. I felt freakishly alone, so monstrously alone.

  “Honestly Silas, this is all so very confusing to each of us.” Daddy said this, pointing to his own chest, toward Mommy Lucinda, and then at Justin. “We all love you so very much, and we all want you with us.” He paused, searching for the right way to talk to me, careful for my heart, searching for the right tone, certainly praying—for God’s hand to settle on my heart. He spoke with his own heart aching.

  “Love you too,” I said.

  “I can’t make you any promises. We’ll be praying for you, son. For some reason God lets strange things—senseless things—happen in people’s lives. We just gotta trust Him, son. There’s nothing else.”

  “I don’t want you to go.”

  “Look at me, son.”

  I was crying. He made me look into his eyes. He cried.

  “You hear me, son?”

  “I nodded.” He made me brave. He wanted me to love his God, to believe his God. There was so much fog and smoke in the way—in my little mind.

  “There is no alternative Silas. You have to trust, son. I want you to understand me, son. I love you.”

  I jumped from my deep chair and ran to him, burying my face on his shoulder, crying out loud. Mommy put her hand on my back and kept rubbing, patting.

  Justin rose and left. He left with the same painful dispatch that he bolted with back in September when I was being taken from their home. After a few minutes he returned, having dried his eyes.

  We embraced like were a family. I now see that their input into my life was done—besides their praying for me. They parted, leaving me a promise that they’d visit regularly—weekly—until they had to go, which was a month away.

  As I’d mentioned, I looked for opportunities to get away from being stuck with Mommy in the big stone residence house. School was an adequate diversion, but when school was out and we had vacation weeks, I made sure I was out as much as was permitted. Tyrone, Kyle, and I spent a lot of time around the channel, mostly fishing. All we caught were snappers, sea robins, once in a while blowfish, eels, and only once I caught a big weakfish. We never had much luck bottom fishing for flounders or fluke in the channel, at least not as much as I had
back at Justin’s house near the ocean, but we did catch some. We caught a lot of crabs for a couple of weeks late in the summer, but then it just died. Our moms packed us a lunch a few times, and we stayed out all day in the sun.

  We could fish only when the locks were closed actually. When the locks were opened, the current surged and rushed too swiftly, pushing all the fish out into the bay. The locks were built to regulate the tide waters’ passage through, opening for short spells every six hours. Boats came through then: tugs, fishing boats, cargo ships, rarely pleasure boats, skiffs, and yachts; sometimes big barges crept sluggishly through, and sometimes they docked along the bulkhead for consecutive days.

  One day during spring recess a barge was tied up directly across the avenue in front of the residence. It was a cloudy, windy, April day—the kind of day that teased, threatening rain but never delivering any; a raw, tumultuous day that allowed momentary flashes, glimpses, peeks of sunlight; a day full of damp, airy dalliance. Tyrone and I lay our poles on the dock and jumped onto the flat, deserted barge to explore. We guessed this was probably forbidden, but we didn’t inquire to know for sure. We were impressed with the rigging, the heavy tackle and rope, all the rusty apparatus. We passed time throwing some rusty bolts, nuts, and other corroded pieces of metal that lay strewn on the deck into the channel. Tyrone spotted a drum: “A drum!” he said. “Look, a half a drum!”

  I immediately pictured in my mind a percussion instrument. “A drum? What drum?”

  He pointed. Several fifty gallon drums filled with some kind of cleaning fluid stood against the cabin at the front of the barge. We walked. There was an empty, cleft in half drum lying on its side, rocking slightly, dry inside.

  “Why’s it in half?” I said.

  “Who knows.”

  “How do they cut it like that?”

  “I don’t know. Big cutter I guess.”

  “Wonder what for.”

  “Who cares. What a neat little boat this could be,” Tyrone said.

  “Yeah.”

  “This is so cool.”

  We were quiet a moment, rocking this thing back and forth.

  “Let’s take it in the channel!” Tyrone said.

  I said nothing.

  “Let’s see if it floats.”

  “What’s it made of?”

  “Plastic I guess.”

  “I guess seein’s okay.”

  “We could sit in it. It’s big.” He had that same, commanding, autocratic tone in his voice he had back in December when he’d said, “Let’s get off the bus at Joey’s stop.” His sudden expression-filled quest to breach boundaries, my quick penchant to follow, our blended aspirational thirst for thrills, all seemed to just drive us to move heedlessly. Without a word we each took an end and lifted, walking sideways toward the water, placing it down again.

  We looked around, simply standing before this thing, beside the channel, on this big flat barge a moment. No one was watching—only one seagull on the barge.

  “Go get that wood! That plank thing!” Tyrone said, pointing to a weathered, four-foot-long one-by-six.

  I walked, picked it up.

  “We can paddle around with it.”

  “Good idea,” I said.

  We lifted the hard, cleft, plastic drum again, over the inch high gunwale, down three feet into the water. “I’ll hold it. You get in first,” Tyrone directed.

  He leaned over, holding. I stepped down carefully—one foot, then the other. I stood a moment, rocking gently, testing its stability. I strained to balance.

  “Sit! Sit down!”

  I sat. “Gimme the board,” I said. He reached down with it, and I gripped. He stepped down carefully—one foot, the other—and he sat facing me.

  We pushed off from the barge, and our little tottery bark drifted out into the channel. A gust pushed us some, making surface ripples on the water. We looked at each other’s tremulous, wide-eyed grimaces. I remember feeling that ecstatic rapture taking my breath away a moment. I wanted to scream with this excitement. This all happened so suddenly, almost thoughtlessly.

  “Gimme the board,” Tyrone said. His white teeth shone within his dark complexion, the inside of his smiling mouth like a fence. He paddled, intent on crossing to the Jersey side. The flat, untapered ends of the drum made steering troublesome, and we kept twirling. Even though the locks were closed there was a slight drift toward Newark Bay as gusts kept blowing. I looked across, into the water’s murky cinnamon color which seemed, under the overcast sky, to have no translucence whatsoever.

  We were out for about five minutes when we realized we had very little control directing our little bark. We had to be very careful to remain seated and still in the center of the drum, because any shift of weight gave us the feeling like we’d roll and tip. It was less stable than even the narrowest of canoes.

  We bobbed in the middle of the channel, and we drifted maybe a couple hundred yards down the channel. There were two men on the Jersey side pointing at us. One shouted, “Hey you kids! You wanna get killed or something?”

  It reminded me of the voice from the passing car when we’d crossed the bridge in December. It struck me funny again as I wondered whether I was supposed to answer the question or not. As I felt invincible in this drum, untouchable out there in the center of the channel, I boldly responded: “Yeah!”

  We both started laughing. We were such wise guys. We didn’t know what we were doing. Neither one of us could swim either. It must have seemed we had a death wish, but we really were just hood-winked, thinking we were invulnerable. We were both afraid to die.

  After about twenty minutes of slow drifting, about halfway to the bridge, we realized the locks had opened. A strong current pushed us, advancing by our mini, heavy bark. We looked at each other with fear and excitement.

  “Locks open!” I said.

  “I think you’re right! Uh-oh!”

  “Here we go!”

  “Cool! Awesome!”

  It’s all so tragically comical as I recall now. There we were, wards of the state, afloat in this drum, precariously endangered, heavily invested in by uninformed taxpayers—tens of thousands of dollars—while psychological and sociological “professionals” back at Crossings House sat “watching” and “counseling” and aiming to help our messed-up “mothers” become mothers, sitting around a table maybe—discussing us, having meetings, hearings, conferences, discussing our mothers, talking “goals,” planning our well-being and futures, picking up their paychecks, talking textbook terminology, tossing around imposing terms like disintegrating consociation with staid expressions on their faces, savoring their own self-esteem and reaching self-actualization and convincing themselves they were making mighty contributions to humanity, while Tyrone and I were afloat at that very hour, drifting one wrong tilt away from drowning death, careless, filthy, ridiculously neglected, coarse on the exterior—like Huck and Jim—moving further into degeneration. This was so tragically comical!

  We spun even more, caught in swirling eddies, and we were quickly passing under the bridge. It was from this point southward to where the residence where we’d launched and the locks—slightly farther—were that the channel was the narrowest and closest to New Jersey; but from this point northward it gradually widened, flowing eventually into Newark Bay.

  Tyrone stuck the one-by-six into the current, thinking maybe we could steer or slow down. It only made us twirl more hectically, causing the drum to reel, wobble, almost tip, giving us a panicky frantic feeling. “Whooee!” We both shouted, giggling nervously.

  “What a we gonna do?” I said.

  “Maybe we could drift by the shore.”

  On the banks of the hastily dilating channel we could see three more people pointing and shouting to us, but we couldn’t hear their words. We waved—not for help—but just to be genial. I still laugh when I think of this. We had only a small idea that our lives were seriously in danger.

  Soon we bobbed into this small gulf called Newark Bay where, b
ecause of the width, the current no longer drove us along; however, waves were no longer only ripples, but choppy rollers that slapped against our little half-canister. This was new scope to us: Bayonne, Elizabeth, industry, cargo ships, access to New York Harbor, the stench of chemicals and paper products being manufactured.

  With this excitement and dismay, I had this subliminal pleasure of escaping Mommy with this instinctive craving of drifting farther from her. At age nine now, in the spring semester of third grade, the actuality that this was not permanent still didn’t link in my immature mindfulness. I had no fear of “getting in trouble” as I simply lived for gratification of the moment. I imagined I could breakout. I imagined Mommy and Daddy Sparks were watching me. I looked up. The clouds were charcoal chalk, gorgeous undulations, impressions of heaven. Off to the east I could see the rising pinnacles of the twin towers peaking silvery, brilliantly like prongs of a tuning fork, above trees and houses and their other nearby buildings. The towers shone, glossy, proud. I felt the wind on my face, moving my tight, tangled hair. Feeling cold, I pushed down the sleeves of my sweatshirt. I imagine we looked primitively curious out there.

  After about ten minutes in the currents of the widening body of water, a fast, snow-white, twenty-five-foot craft came racing toward us from the Cary Island side. Large black letters on the hull told us it was the bay constable. The vessel stopped and turned broadside before us. One officer steered, standing; one stood with his fists on his hips and sunglasses on; and the other held out a speakerphone. All wearing their authority-blue windbreakers with white Police lettering, we could hear the loud electronic command: “Unauthorized, unregistered small crafts are prohibited in these waters!”

  We didn’t know what this meant. We looked at each other, half grinning, halfway to tears. When they realized we were kids much younger than what was probably reported from those adults beside the channel, they lowered a dinghy. The men that weren’t steering got in and rowed toward us. The one black man said, “What are you rascals doin’ out here? You want to drown or something?”